Directed by Tom McLoughlin
Screenplay by Tom McLoughlin
Produced by Don Behrns
Cinematography by Jon Kranhouse
Music by Harry Manfredini
Key Cast:
Thom Mathews as Tommy Jarvis
Jennifer Cooke as Megan Garris
David Kagen as Sheriff Michael Garris
Renée Jones as Sissy Baker
Kerry Noonan as Paula
Darcy DeMoss as Nikki
Tom Fridley as Cort
C.J. Graham as Jason Voorhees
Genre: Horror/Thriller/Slasher/Comedy
Rated: R (edited after receiving an X on first submission)
Runtime: 1 hr 26 min
Country: USA
Working Title: Aladdin Sane
Budget: $3,000,000
Gross: $18,964,000 (1996)
Opening Weekend: $6,751,000
Released: August 1, 1986
Filmed: March - April 1986
Aspect Ratio: 1.85 : 1
Taglines: ... Nothing This Evil Ever Dies / Kill Or Be Killed
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| "Don't I already have two of these?" |
A thunderstorm is brewing over the little town of Forest Green.
Superhuman serial killer Jason Voorhees has been dead and buried for six years. However, Tommy Jarvis, who killed Jason in self-defense when he was 12 years old, is still haunted by his encounter, resulting in his having been institutionalized for an extended period of time.
Intent on cremating Jason's body to rid himself of his demons, Tommy escapes the mental hospital with his friend, Hawes, and breaks into the cemetery containing Jason's grave. He and Hawes exhume Jason's casket, but before they can cremate the body, an infuriated Tommy begins stabbing it with a steel fence post. The post acts as a conductor for an ongoing lightning storm, and Jason is resurrected from the dead. He kills Hawes with a punch through the heart and throws his body into the exhumed coffin, prompting Tommy to flee the cemetery.
Tommy returns to the town of Crystal Lake, the site of Jason's killings, which has now been renamed Forest Green to distance itself from negative publicity. Tommy attempts to warn the town arrogant sheriff, Mike Garris, of Jason's return, but Garris, aware of Tommy's institutionalization, writes him off as disturbed and has him locked in a holding cell.
Meanwhile, Jason begins a trek back to the lake that was the site of his drowning as a child. En route, he encounters Lizabeth and Darren, a pair of summer camp supervisors, who are themselves headed to the lake to supervise the re-opening of the summer camp. Jason attacks and kills them, leaving their bodies in the woods.
The next morning, Sheriff Garris's daughter, Megan, who is slated to be one of the camp counselors, arrives with her fellow counselors Cort, Sissy, and Paula to report Lizabeth and Darren missing. Tommy cites their disappearance as evidence of Jason's return, but is met with hostility from everyone but Megan, who takes a liking to him. Sheriff Garris sends the counselors off to the campsite and then escorts Tommy out of town; en route, Tommy flees to the cemetery to try and show Garris the open grave, only to discover that the groundskeeper, fearful of being implicated for digging up the grave due to his alcoholism, has covered the grave (and, consequently, Hawes's body) with dirt. Garris handcuffs Tommy and takes him to the city limits, warning him not to return.
Meanwhile, a quintet of business people playing paintball in the woods are set upon by Jason, who kills them and steals their supplies. That night, Jason continues making his way back to Crystal Lake, in the process killing the grave digger and a nearby couple having a picnic. Cort meets up with a local girl, Nikki, and leaves the camp to have sex with her in the woods; they end up in Jason's path and are both killed by him.
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| "I swear, it wasn't me." |
Sheriff Garris ultimately finds the bodies, and believes that Tommy has killed them, living out a delusion of Jason's return.
Tommy, meanwhile, has contacted Megan, having figured out a way to defeat Jason after having read books on monsters and folklore: He can be incapacitated by being trapped beneath the surface of the lake where he drowned. Megan attempts to bring Tommy back to the camp, but they are intercepted by one of Garris's roadblocks. Tommy is arrested and Megan is escorted back to the police station to await her father's return from the field. The police's attention on Tommy permits Jason to slip into the summer camp, where he kills Paula and Sissy, but refrains from harming any of the children.
Megan and Tommy escape the police station and make it to the lake, where the pursuing police are forced to acknowledge Jason's return when he attacks them. Garris and his deputies briefly incapacitate Jason by shooting him with high caliber weapons, but Jason ultimately recovers and kills them all. He then attempts to kill Megan, but is distracted by Tommy, who beckons to him from the lake. Seemingly remembering Tommy, Jason abandons Megan and wades out to the lake, where Tommy ambushes him with a chain attached to a large boulder. A fight ensues, during which both Tommy and Jason are knocked into the water; as Tommy attempts to swim to the surface, Jason pulls him underwater and he loses consciousness. Megan swims out to save Tommy and is likewise attacked by Jason, but finally incapacitates him by driving a motor boat propeller into his head.
Back on land, Megan revives Tommy with CPR and the children celebrate
The next day we find the lake is peaceful. Jason drifts motionless underneath.
But his eye reveals he is still alive.
(Source: imdb.com: by matt-282, alexcujo, with slight editions)
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| Worst. Birthday. Ever. |
Review/Analysis:
Jason Lives: Friday the 13th Part VI is one of the more underrated films in the series. While not the best, you can tell the filmmakers wanted to make a good horror film that would both satisfy fans of the series and be a little smarter. It wouldn't be until Jason X (2001) that the series would again use its awareness of the silly premise as a strength.
What makes it's meta-humor smart is that they know not to make fun of Jason. This maintains his antagonism as a serious threat. Victims might spot a horror cliche while it's happening but they won't mock the genre or the killer.
A little back story:
-Tommy Jarvis killed off Jason in Part IV- which was suppose to be "The Final Chapter."
-With that being a gigantic money maker, Part V: A New Beginning was quickly put into production.
-Tommy Jarvis was brought back again as a red herring (Part IV hinted Tommy could become Jason), but audiences were disappointed to find out Roy the ambulance driver was now the killer.
-Skip to Part VI: Jason Lives, they decide to bring Jason back and who better to resurrect him than the boy who killed him.
One of the earliest meta-scenes is Jason's resurrection. As a nod to the classic horror story Frankenstein, Tommy Jarvis gives life to his monster through lightning.
This scene ends with a parody of James Bond's iconic gun barrel opening. Instead of Bond walking in and shooting at us, we jump cut 6x into Jason's eye- the pupil dilates, Jason walks in to slash at the screen.
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| Coming this Christmas: Son of a Bond |
It's a love it or hate it moment. For me it works because it establishes that the film isn't taking itself as serious as Parts I and II.
The opening montage with lightning behind clouds, trees silhouetted by moonlight, and fog rolling off the lake effectively capture the mood of a horror film. But the humor of the piece is harder to establish. This James Bond parody, not being subtle in anyway, clues the audience in that Jason Lives is a playful movie.
So when Darren and Lizabeth stop short after almost running Jason over, it doesn't feel out of place when she says "I've seen enough horror movies to know any weirdo wearing a mask is never friendly."
Or when Cort and Nikki can have this exchanged:
Cort: Check this out.
[Shows Nikki a shredded power cable]
Nikki: What happened to it?
Cort: I don't know, but I suggest if we don't want to look like it we make this place a
memory right now.
[Nikki looks at the cord a few seconds and follows Cort meeting him around the other side]
Cort: Nikki, someone's out there. What if it's that guy, Jason?
Which is kind of nice because the victims aren't as oblivious like in most slasher films. It's riffing the "investigating a strange noise outside" cliche, but here the character basically says "It's Jason. No more investigating. Let's get out of here." It's almost refreshing... until they revert back for their death scenes.
And there's small things like this shot of a camper sleeping:
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| "Death Must Enter Life Only to Define it."- Sartre, No Exit |
Or Lizabeth trying to buy Jason off before getting the fence post shoved down her throat which results in this:
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| She should know it's not accepted everywhere. |
I always assumed they were being indolent with their product placement. But it turns out director Tom McLoughlin put it in as a set-up for a punchline. The shot is held long enough to allow someone in your audience to yell out "Don't leave home without it" and get a laugh in the theater.
There are three HUGE things that separate Jason Lives from all the other Friday the 13th movies.
1) Welcome To Camp.... Forest Green?
That's right. Not Crystal Lake. The reasoning behind this is that after Jason was killed (and after Roy's copy-cat killings, I assume. They never bring up Part V ), the town decided to change it's name and insist that Jason was not real but a local legend.
It's not a bad idea, but there's no payoff to it.
Everyone, even the kids, knows about Camp Blood. They're not fooling anyone. It would take a few decades for that plan to really pay-off. Say after a hiatus- like tomorrow they decided to make a follow-up to Jason Takes Manhattan but set it in the present- this town idea might work. But in Jason Lives it makes no difference. They could of called it Crystal Lake and it would change nothing.
Not to mention, they just threw the camp sign into the lake:
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| No one will ever find it here. |
2) The Only Friday the 13th With No Nudity
With 80's slasher films, you kind of expect tits. Besides the murder set pieces, tits are like the second reason you are watching these movies. It's certainly not the story; half these films are the same basic premise and the other half don't even have a plot.
I actually did not notice this film's lack of nudity until it was pointed out to me. Which says a lot. To never once get bored enough to ask "when are we going to see some goods" indicates the film held my attention as a kid.
Although, I did see a lot of these slasher films for the first time on TV Shows like USA's Up All Night, so that could also be why it never stuck out, even when I finally bought the VHS.
The film does have one sex scene between Nikki and Cort-
But the fact that they are clothed is the least odd thing about it
3) There Are Children At The Camp
Having kids in a horror film can be a bit taboo. You can do anything you want to adults, but kill a dog or a child and usually the audience will turn on you. Trick 'r Treat (2007) spent years sitting on a shelf because the studio feared a boycott.
Normally, This series got around it by saying the counselors are fixing up the camp before the kids arrive.
And there has been kids in the Friday the 13th films (the prologue in Part 1 for example) and Tommy Jarvis in Part IV (played by Corey Feldman), but this is the only one that has children staying in the camp while Jason is murdering counselors.
Don't worry, Jason Lives doesn't kill off any of them, but teases that it's coming and takes it to the point that all the counselors are dead, leaving Jason alone with the children.
There's one little girl who the filmmakers make stand out. She has dreams of a monster before Jason arrives, she witnesses Jason carrying Sissy's headless body (come to think of it, where the hell was he taking that body?), and she finds Jason's bloody machete. We're zeroed in on her out of all the other children. So when Jason has run out of adults to kill and enters the cabin full of little girls, you know right away which little girl Jason is going to select- the one the filmmakers have made the audience develop feelings for.
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| "They're making these tramps smaller I see." |
The violence in this series is not hardcore by today's standards, but back when it was released many found it to be shocking. Gene Siskel in his review for Jason Lives called it "... the most offensive series in film history." Which makes you wonder if he missed all those Naziploitation and Gialli films that were way more misogynistic than any Hollywood Slasher. Siskel and Ebert even devoted an entire episode to shaming what they called Women in Danger Pictures- making sure to point out Halloween- which they raved about- didn't count because it's art.
Despite how tame most of these 80's slasher films seem by today's standards, almost all of them were cut to receive an R-rating. Some have been restored; others like Jason Lives probably won't have that luxury. It's audience is a niche-market despite being a popular series. It's not cost effective for the studio to put the time and money into something that will sell the same amount of copies the way it is.
In the 80s, there was a cult of fear involving movies (it still exist today). Someone does a horrible thing:
What music were they listening to?
What video games did they play?
What movie did they watch last?
Stuff that really won't cause a person to commit mass murder but provides an easy digestible answer for mass consumption. And it gets legitimized by News stations to help their ratings and draw out the coverage whenever there's a school shooting.
In Britain they started banning films. They even created a list called the Video Nasties.
Whereas in America, we trusted that if the MPAA passed it- it's safe.
In Jason Lives nearly every death is edited and changed in someway. But it wouldn't just affect the finished product.
Even before filming started, they would looked at the storyboards and make guesses about what wouldn't pass. Nikki's death in the camper is a great example. Originally Jason was going to rip her throat out. Knowing the MPAA's reaction, Frank Mancuso Jr told the director to tone it down.
So instead he storyboarded this:
A much more cartoonish death, with Nikki's face getting pushed through the wall and making a perfect mold before the machete stabs through the forehead.
This, of course, becomes edited down further once the MPAA sees it to just this:
Sans machete.
It's lamentable that they did not bring back Tommy Jarvis in the next film. There's a Van Helsing vs. Dracula struggle that deserved to be capitalized on.
It's even more unfortunate in all three films Tommy Jarvis is played by a different actor; making the character have no clear identity. Halloween has Laurie Strode(Jamie Lee Curtis), A Nightmare on Elm Street has Nancy(Heather Langenkamp), but Friday the 13th's Tommy Jarvis calls to mind three faces.
It's hard to have a reoccurring character if no one knows what he's going to look like in the next film.
Jason Lives: Friday the 13th Part VI is a good, fun slasher film. It has that mid-80s slasher quality: a mix of early 80's nihilistic violence as seen through the veil of the MTV generation.
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| Damn it, VHS tape! That's the ending! |
Trivia
1) Body count: 18
2) In the script, Jason's father, Elias, makes an appearance visiting his son's grave. It's the only time he's ever been mentioned in a Friday the 13th film. Storyboards of it exist.
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| I don't always visit my son's grave, but when I do I don't buy flowers. |
3) Alice Cooper did a tie-in song and music video called He's Back (The Man Behind The Mask). ENJOY:
-Nicolas Edelbach
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